Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
On the Move

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

Buzios: The Music

I'm in the most famous and most expensive resort town in Brazil right now. I'm staying at a campsite a good half hour outside of town for about $3.50 a night and I have the whole place to myself.

I sat in the pool last night with no lights and watched bats swoop down and eat bugs off the water. A frog crawled up onto my shoulder.

This place is kind of expensive and most of the people here are with their kids. I'm waiting for everybody to go to bed so I can check out the beautiful women. I can't drink though. Every time I drink, my gut, bellow my belly button grows to the size of a cantaloupe. I don't know which one of my organs is damaged from drinking, I just know that one of them is.

Brazilians are incredible people. They really have an appreciation for life and are honestly friendly. I think the reason is because it is pretty dangerous to live here and almost everybody had the shit scared out of them as a kid, or maybe as an adult.

The regular neighborhoods are really incredible places to be. Where I'm staying is in a really residential area, far away from the tourism. All there really is for recreation is a cement soccer field and a playground that is packed every night. The soccer games are fierce.

The cops will sometimes show up and stroll up to some of the more shady looking members of the community and just shake them down and nobody even bats an eye. It is just the way of life here.

Part of why I'm explaining this is because Brazilians are way into music from the U.S., but they don't speak English. And, straight up, just like back in the day when the first Eazy-E came out and people just listened to it because it made them feel cool and gave them an adrenaline rush, that is how it is every day.

People listen to gangster rap a lot. How it goes down is people buy the party mixes that are available from the States, and one of them is the gangster rap party mix. And it has some crazy shit on it.

Like last night I was at the surfer beach in the premier resort town of Buzios called Geriba (pronounced Jerry-bah). And it was so relaxing, I really reached a state of Zen or yoga, where I was just starting to feel better and it was windy because the weather is shitty everywhere else, and I was just chillin' under an umbrella and they were blasting gangster rap.

It was kind of interesting to be so relaxed while there was so much swearing and threatening going on over the loudspeakers that were blasting over the beach.

There were these great kids who put sand all over their wet faces and were dancing around all wacky on the beach like rapper zombies. But then a really crazy song came on. I guess it was the famous controversial song where Tupac threatens the lives of all the Bad Boy Crew and Mobb Deep and all these other people, but it was pretty off the hook.

I hadn't actually heard the song, but he is just straight-up yelling into the microphone that he is going to shoot all these different rappers. And my state of yoga was not broken. I was just that relaxed that I was able to listen to it in complete calm. But I was a little shocked. And nobody really knew what they were saying except for me.

Yet the zombie rapper kids who had been entertaining everybody picked up on the negative energy of the song and started arguing and slapping each other in the face. It was kind of like a psychological experiment showing the detrimental effects of negative music.

And then there was the bizarre, random, sexual statements Redman yelled into the mic about what he's going to do chicks and what have you.

After chilling with all of this, I went back to my place and kicked it next to the futbol field where they were blasting J-Lo, and I just couldn't handle it. She's all claiming the South Bronx and talking about how much she hates one of her ex-boyfriends and how guys deserve to get their asses fucked with by chicks because they're stupid or some shit.

I don't know why it gets under my skin. I think it's because she's a multimillionaire, and she's like telling me I'm shit. But I guess I'm really just tripping.

Swearing on the radio and nudity on TV is cool though. If you see an album at the store called Rappa, buy it. They're completely awesome. There is a lot of good music and a lot of the girls appear in Playboy.

There is an incredible girl from Rocina named Kelly Key. She is totally fine and if you see her album, grab it. I bought this other Playboy with a blond girl who has a video on MTV. I don't know what her name is, but she is so incredibly fine, it's almost unspeakable.

My mom told me when I was a kid that people who talk a lot of shit about gay people are usually gay. If that's true, I might be a really fine chick. I want to do everything in my power to find out if that's true.

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